But the reconciliation between the couples did not last long. By patronizing the boyars, Svyatoslav aroused the mob against himself. He sent the veche to tell the prince: “We cannot keep two princes; take your brother David out of New Torg.” Svyatoslav, “not trusting his heart,” sent his brother to Smolensk. But this is just an excuse. The new one decided to take custody of the prince himself. He was warned, but he did not try to kill him. Then the Novgorodians locked him up in a banya under guard, sent his wife to the Varvarinsky Monastery, intercepted his squad, chained him and plundered his property. After a little time, the prince was sent to Ladoga under guard, from where he managed to escape to Polotsk; there! Prince Rogvolod accompanied him to Smolensk. Rostislav, having learned about the fate of his son, ordered to seize the Novgorodians who were in Yekaterinburg and lock them in a cellar, where 14 of them died that night. 63)
Meanwhile, the Novgorodians turned to Andrei Yuryevich for princes.
But. a year later, Rostislav succeeded in achieving the fact that Andrei brought his nephew out of Novgorod, and Svyatoslav was imprisoned there again, but “with all his will,” ") In Myashe Rosti-
62) Novg., 142. ` 63) Ip., 350, Novgor., 148. 64) Novgor., 144.
glory began to fall on Novgorodtsev. Yes, this is not surprising: by patronizing the boyars, Rostislav “torn apart” the Novgorodians. Of course, as great as Prince Ekev, who owned the Smolensk land, he could now, in alliance with Andrei, force Novgorodtsev to accept Svyatoslav “with all his will.” But by this he did not destroy the “tearing apart”, because he continued to adhere to the same traditional policy. Soon Rostislav's personal intervention in the affairs of Novgorod was again required. Obviously, Svyatoslav held out weakly there and his father wanted to support him with his personal authority. In 1166, he went to Novgorod and called the firemen, gridis and merchants “to order.” °) You can see from this. that the named classes were dissatisfied with his son and formed an opposition whose demands had to be taken into account; meanwhile, the firemen, the gridi and the merchants constituted the lower, middle, ignorant part of the population, opposite the boyars. The nature of the Smolensk policy is also confirmed by the fact that when in the next year the Novgorodians went against Yaroslav, they first of all killed the most important representatives of the opposing party, who created the “revolution”, the mayor Zakhary and the birich N%zda. °)
And this time Rostislav’s trip was not successful. As is known, on the way back to Noev, he died, and his son had to leave Novgorod the next year, and a serious struggle broke out with the Smolensk princes. But we will return to this later.
It is more difficult to find out which party Rostislav supported in the land of Polotsk. The record only mentions that he provided assistance to one or another prince, but so little is known about the nature of the policy of the Polotsk princes that it is difficult to determine the direction of Rostislav’s policy. It is possible that in this case he adhered to the same principles as in Novgorod and promoted those of the princes who adhered to the boyar party. Be that as it may, Rostislav’s desire for a military campaign in Polotsy tended to subjugate this land to him and to take advantage of the weakness of its princes to withdraw part of the territory to Smolensk.
It is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that Rostislav, despite all the successes of his brother Izyaslav in the struggle for the grand-ducal table, never received new regions or cities from his brother, while the increase in the region was the constant result of any success in ancient Rus'. There is no reason to think about the selflessness of the Smolensk prince. But we see that the princes did little to intervene in his fight against Novgorod, and Izyaslav only supported him. On the other hand, the Mstislavichs did not intervene in Polotsy on behalf of Rostislav, and only the Olgovichi made an attempt to oppose here their memory to the aspirations of the Smolensk prince. Therefore, it seems to us that Rostislav did not want to take advantage of the subsequent successes with his ally in those regions, southern and Volyn, which were attracted to the Eyuevsky princess and which could not expand his territories, and by agreement with his brother he directed his aspirations to Novgorod and Polotsk, where no one bothered him.